


Damselfly

by Rubynye



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, One of My Favorites
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-18
Updated: 2011-07-18
Packaged: 2017-10-21 12:45:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/225300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rubynye/pseuds/Rubynye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From <a href="http://xmen-firstkink.livejournal.com/397.html?thread=1328269#t1328269">the prompt</a>: Angel finds an entomology student to help with her damaged wings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Damselfly

**Author's Note:**

> Acknowledgments: Written for [](http://a-q.livejournal.com/profile)[**a_q**](http://a-q.livejournal.com/) , whose writing at [](http://xmen-firstkink.livejournal.com/profile)[**xmen_firstkink**](http://xmen-firstkink.livejournal.com/) I've greatly admired. Posted in belated honor of [the International Day of Femslash](http://femslashday.com/), which was Saturday, and with thanks to [](http://lyonesse.livejournal.com/profile)[**lyonesse**](http://lyonesse.livejournal.com/) for telling me what Phoebe's gift is.  
> 

Phoebe Cay sat slumped over her desk in the bowels of the [MCZ](http://www.mcz.harvard.edu/), idly typing up yet another set of observation notes, when a beautiful woman walked into the office and started off the most wonderful, terrifying, and adventuresome week of her life.

"Excuse me," Phoebe heard in a soft sweet voice, "I'm looking for a professor of entomology?" She looked up, and a honey-skinned woman stood on the other side of her desk, the weak fluorescent gleaming like sunshine on her sleek black hair. She smiled warmly and Phoebe swallowed hard, mouth gone abruptly dry. "I need a little help," the woman continued in a California accent, dust motes glittering as they drifted down around her, and Phoebe's heart gave a funny sideways jerk in her chest.

 _Get up,_ she thought, mentally slapping herself, and made herself sit up straight and smile back though her mouth wanted to drop open. "Ah, uh, yes," she finally managed to stammer, "Um, Professor Thompkins isn't available, he's on a research trip --" to the Amazon, which Phoebe had never _seen_ , but of course Barry thought it was no place to take a _lady_ , damn him anyway -- "but if you'll give me a minute I might be able to find out if another faculty member is available?"

The beautiful woman tilted her gleaming head, weighing Phoebe's words. "You're the first person I've seen since I got back here."

Which wasn't surprising. It was Intersession, after all, and everyone in the department was on vacation or on research trips to warmer places than Cambridge in January. Even the Museum was closed, and -- "How did you get in here?" Phoebe asked with belated alarm.

"I have my ways," said the woman with such a sweet smile Phoebe couldn't sustain her worry. "And I should introduce myself." She held out a leather-gloved hand. "Angel Salvadore."

"Phoebe Cay." Phoebe scrambled to her feet, holding out her own short-nailed hand. At least her polish job was up to date, she thought inanely as Angel squeezed her fingers. "And... depending on your question..." Angel watched Phoebe steadily as she scraped together her little crumbs of courage and finally stammered out, "perhaps I can help you. I'm a graduate student in entomology."

Angel's eyebrows lifted, and Phoebe gritted her teeth. Of course she didn't believe her. But when Angel spoke it was with a sad smile as she replied, "Oh honey, then you never should have started typing."

Phoebe had to shake her head, had to laugh bitterly and come around from behind her desk. "Don't I know it. I work part time as my advisor's secretary, and full time trying to remind him I'm also a student." Angel's hand was still comfortably folded in hers, and when Phoebe noticed and tried to let go, Angel wrapped her other hand around theirs, smiling brightly again.

"Come play hooky," she told Phoebe. "Let me buy you a cup of coffee."

Phoebe didn't even look back at her typewriter, or let go of Angel. She nodded, caught up her coat with her free hand, and went.

* * * **** * * * 

Phoebe sat shivering on a bench by Widener Gate, watching passerby streaming into and out of the subway station and trying to tamp down both worry and cold. Yesterday she and Angel had spent over two hours chatting over coffee and sandwiches before agreeing to meet today, and Phoebe got all the way back to her apartment before realizing she still didn't know what Angel's biology-related question was. Now she wondered if Angel would even show up, if she hadn't just daydreamed the warm lovely woman who'd interrupted her boring winter's day.

"You look chilled," Angel said beside her. Phoebe jumped, and when she tried to talk her teeth clicked together. Angel's laugh puffed out in a white cloud, and she tucked her hand under Phoebe's arm and tugged her to her feet, keeping their arms linked. "Let's go back to the museum, I have something to show you."

Once inside the museum's dusty warmth and ensconced in a lab ("Lock the door," Angel insisted), Angel took off her coat, then the long jacket she wore beneath it, leaving on her leather gloves even though her arms were now bare. When she turned, putting her back to Phoebe, what looked like a high collared sleeveless dress was revealed as backless, showing off a gorgeous tattoo of dragonfly wings all across her shoulders and upper arms.

Then the wings lifted off Angel's skin, unfurling into iridescent reality.

"Oh my God," Phoebe gasped, grabbing for the nearest desk to steady herself as Angel smiled over one bewinged shoulder, her booted feet lifting off the ground. She had _wings_. She could _fly_. She -- grimaced and settled down again, and as the wings fluttered to a stop Phoebe saw that the left forewing had a ragged chunk missing all the way to the costa, that the left hindwing was frayed along its margin. "You have wings," Phoebe gabbled, and watched Angel's shoulders roll in a shrug. "They're -- they're damaged."

Angel turned to face her again, keeping the wings fanned out. "Got in a fight," was all she said, her voice and words both flat, not meeting Phoebe's eyes.

Phoebe felt a fierce, irrational burst of anger at whoever would damage Angel's gorgeous wings. "May I, um, examine them?"

Now Angel looked up, and her smile was sheer magic. "That's why I came here." So Phoebe stepped close, close enough to smell Angel's floral perfume rising off her warm skin, and looked over her shoulder at her injured wings. Holding her breath the way she had the first time a butterfly had settled on her finger, Phoebe carefully examined the veins and membranes sparkling with soft rainbows in the low light.

Then she concentrated, and focused, and looked _closely_.

It was a thing Phoebe could do, that no one else she'd ever met could. She could refocus her eyes into microscopes to see the cells in living things and the fine details of objects. Soon enough she'd have to find a magnifying glass and pretend to look through it, to justify all she could see, but for now she studied the familiar interlock of chitin-encased cells, recreated to a magnificent scale on a beautiful woman's back.

The ragged edges were a combination of healing rips and cauterized burns, and Phoebe couldn't begin to imagine what had done this to Angel's wings, but now she could see the problem, could see a possible solution. Muttering some excuse she ran to find the biggest magnifying glass she could hold and raised it to Angel's wings, examining the injured ones and then looking at the whole ones for comparison, and just because they were so very beautiful.

Finally she put the glass down and looked Angel in the eye. "I think I know what to do," she said, and swallowed hard, "but I think it might hurt."

Angel shrugged again. "Pain happens. What can you tell me?"

"Your wings... they're partially cauterized, and those parts can't grow back. I think if the cauterized edges are trimmed off and some growth factors applied they should be able to repair themselves, but... that would mean..."

"Cutting them." Angel took a deep steadying breath, and smiled at Phoebe with the reassurance that Phoebe ought to have been giving her. "Well, it's worth a try, isn't it?"

"But -- have you ever injured them before?" Phoebe's mind whirled on two levels, one scientifically considering treatment, one still stunned by the sight of a woman with _wings_.

Angel nodded. "A couple times when I was learning to fly. They always grew back, so I guess it makes sense that the burned edges are what's keeping them from healing this time. Well, what are we waiting for?" She turned, heading for a clear table in the center of the room.

"Wait! I -- this is _surgery_ , Angel, and I don't even have anything to give you. it really will hurt," Phoebe stammered. She'd gone into science because she didn't want to be a nurse, didn't want to fight her way through to being a doctor, didn't want to make people hurt even to heal them, and now she would have to.

Angel looked at Phoebe for a long moment, then reached out and gathered up Phoebe's hands in hers. "I know," she said, voice soft and warm, "but I need this. And I trust you." She squeezed Phoebe's fingers gently, then let go. "So go get the stuff you'll need while I make myself comfortable, okay?"

Phoebe swallowed hard. "Okay," she said, against all her better judgement, looking into Angel's confident eyes.

* * * **** * * * 

Angel never screamed. She breathed hard through her teeth, whimpered twice and swore once, something low in Spanish that Phoebe didn't catch, but a curse was a curse in any language and if someone had been trimming Phoebe's wings with dissection scissors -- if she'd had wings -- she would've cursed too. She bit her lip hard, bruising a reminder of the pain she was inflicting into herself as she worked, trimming as little as possible with scissors and scalpel from Angel's damaged wings.

By the time Phoebe was done they were both shaking, Angel's forehead beaded with sweat. When Phoebe laid down her scalpel and stepped back, Angel clamped a strong hand around her wrist, breathing, "Don't go just yet."

"I'm not going anywhere," Phoebe said, looking down at the top of Angel's bowed head, her shining hair hanging lank around her face. Angel trembled as she nodded, and Phoebe's eyes ached, her heart ached with the sudden urge to hug Angel.

So she did. She wrapped her arms carefully around Angel, avoiding her wings, and Angel squeezed her tightly in turn. "I'm sorry," Phoebe murmured, her cheek against Angel's hair. "I'm sorry it hurts."

Angel shook her head against Phoebe's shoulder. "It's okay," she mumbled back. "It's okay."

"No, it's not. Why did we have to do this today? We could've at least gotten a bottle of liquor, or -- chloroform!" Phoebe jumped back, ready to smack herself in the face. "Oh, I'm such an idiot!"

"Really, it's okay." Angel caught Phoebe's wrist again, and smiled again, if shakily. "I can't go back all woozy and smelling like a good party, or there'll be hell to pay." _Go back?_ Phoebe thought, and Angel saw the question on her face and shook her head in response, smiling wider. "Seriously, Phee, it's okay. Anyway, we should clean up. You got a little bag I can have?"

"Are you feeling sick?" Angel actually grinned at that, as if she would have laughed. "Um, let me find one." It only took a moment, but when Phoebe came back Angel was picking up the shards of her wings, carefully gathering up even the smallest.

Phoebe held the bag open and picked up pieces as well. "I should really get a specimen box," she commented absently, turning over a glittering fragment.

Angel's "No!" made her jump. "No samples," Angel insisted, her voice low and steely, and Phoebe blinked and nodded before she even thought. "And please don't tell anyone about this," she added, taking the fragment from Phoebe's fingers.

"But you're a --"

"Mutant," Angel said with a shrug, and winced. "I know."

"I was about to say, 'Miracle of science,'" Phoebe corrected, but she swept up all the fragments left on the table, carefully dropping them into the bag. Angel grinned again, and Phoebe smiled back.

Then Angel sighed, and pulled her wings back onto her skin. "Thank you, Phee," she said, pushing off the table, and didn't wobble on her feet.

"You're welcome... _Phee_?"

"Well, you're not a bee," Angel said, her grin tilting rakishly. "I'll meet you back here tomorrow at noon, okay, so you can check on my wings?"

"Absolutely, but --" But Angel already had her jacket on, and with a cheerful little wave she gathered up her coat and walked off as if she were perfectly fine.

That's when Phoebe realized she'd forgotten about applying the growth factor.

* * * **** * * * 

As it turned out, the growth factor wasn't necessary. Angel walked up to Phoebe's desk with a spring in her step and a bright smile, dropped her coat and spun to flare out her wings, showing a full inch of even new growth. "I slept for twelve hours," she told Phoebe, smiling over her shoulder, "but it was worth it."

"Oh thank goodness!" Phoebe focused and found Angel's wings busily repairing themselves, cells dividing fast enough to see them moving; she switched back to normal vision just in time for Angel to grab her hand again. "Let's go celebrate," she suggested before Angel could, and was rewarded with a huge grin.

That set the pattern for the next three days. Angel came to Phoebe, who looked over her wings to make sure they were healing well, and then they went out to windowshop and eat and talk, endlessly and cheerfully. Angel told Phoebe about the West, where she was from; Phoebe hadn't yet left Massachusetts except to attend Vassar, and Angel's stories of traveling all over the continent fascinated her.

Angel seemed equally interested in Phoebe's studies and her reasons for pursuing science, although one day she frowned over cake crumbs and empty teacups and said to Phoebe, "You would be a good doctor, if you wanted."

"Yes, but I told you, I don't like hurting people. After..." Phoebe trailed off, unsure how to describe the surgery she'd promised not to speak of, and Angel nodded for her to continue. "I could barely sleep that night."

Angel considered this, then asked, "What about the insects you've been collecting, your -- maidenflies?"

"Damselflies," Phoebe corrected absently, licking a last smear of frosting off her fork.

"Yes, them. Doesn't it hurt them when you stick them with a pin?"

Phoebe shrugged. "I try to chloroform them first if I can, but... I don't really think about it. They're not people."

"It's not only humans who can be hurt," Angel countered. Phoebe stopped and really looked at her, the firm set to her rosy mouth and the glints in her dark eyes, and swallowed down her first thought.

Instead she said, "Would you like to come to my place? I could, um, make you some soup."

Angel smiled again, but her eyes were sad. "Oh, honey. I'd like to, but it's better if I don't know where you live." But she reached over and squeezed Phoebe's hand again.

So Phoebe nodded, and motioned to the waitress.

When they walked out into the bright chill day, Angel looped her arm through Phoebe's and led her around a corner and into a tiny space barely large enough to call an alley, the icy gravel crunching underfoot as Angel steered them into its depths. When the street behind them was shrunk to a slice of light between dark walls, Angel stopped them, stepped in front of Phoebe, and laid her gloved hands on Phoebe's cheeks. "I don't think I can come back again," she said, very gently.

Phoebe's heart sank into her belly. "Because I asked --"

"Oh, no," Angel said. "No. I just... can't. But I wanted to thank you, Phoebe, for helping me. I might never have flown again without you, and I'm glad I met you." With those words, Angel closed her eyes, tilted Phoebe's face, and kissed her. Her mouth was soft and warm and sweet as the promise of her honey-colored skin, and Phoebe's eyes fluttered between wide with shock and swooning closed with delight.

When Angel let her up, Phoebe stupidly opened her kiss-stunned mouth, and what fell out was, "Are you a--?" before she could stop herself.

But Angel just kept smiling. "Let's just say I like to stay open to everything life has to offer," she said, and Phoebe's hands were on her back, their coats were crushing together, she smiled wider and pulled Phoebe in for another kiss. Where the first one was sunlight, this one was liquid flame, hot and wet with sweet flickers of tongue, and when Angel pulled back she left Phoebe gasping. "You'd better go on home," she murmured, sliding her gloved fingertips down Phoebe's cheeks, leaving trails of warmth in the bitter winter air. "Before I do something stupid."

Phoebe had no idea what to say. She unwound her arms from Angel's waist, and Angel nodded at her, eyes bright with burgeoning tears; she turned and took three steps before she thought she could say goodbye, but when she looked back, Angel was gone.

So Phoebe made her way home, smudging away a few tears with her scarf, holding those kisses warm inside her. She climbed the steps to her apartment, thinking with each step of Angel's fluttering wings, and pulled her keys from her purse.

Then they wrenched themselves from her grip, and in astonishment she watched them fly in a horizontal line to the hand of a tall dapper man with a grim, grim face. "So you're Angel's little secret," he said, just before something thumped hard into the back of Phoebe's head.

* * * **** * * * 

Phoebe woke up with a throbbing head to the sound of Angel and the tall man shouting in Spanish. She lay on her side on a cold concrete floor, a band of metal twisted tightly around her wrists, her fingers beginning to tingle. Her ankles were bound the same way, as if she were trussed up to be slaughtered, and all the fear in her crystallized around that thought, making her heart race.

A new voice entered the conversation, a woman's bored voice speaking English. "Would the two of you hush? You're frightening the poor dear."

"Phee, you're awake?" Angel called, and Phoebe opened her eyes to see a large open room, maybe a disused warehouse, and clustered together Angel in her coat, the tall man wearing a domed helmet, and a blonde woman wrapped in a long white fur-trimmed coat. "You all right?" Angel turned towards her, and Phoebe smiled through her confusion and pain --

\-- until a length of chain link fence slid over as if pulled by an invisible hand and arched itself over Phoebe, making a tiny little cage. She shrieked in startled terror, and Angel screamed with her, turning back towards the tall man as she shouted, "Stop it!"

"She knows about your gift," he said, voice cool and biting as the winter wind. "She's a risk."

"She helped me! Stop tormenting her!" Angel pounded his chest with both fists; he didn't even flinch. The blonde woman smiled as if entertained.

"I have no intention of tormenting her." He strode towards Phoebe, who squirmed away but couldn't go anywhere, trapped under the dome of metal mesh. "Thank you for treating Angel's injury," he told her, calm and polite and obviously controlling the metal trapping her. "Lie still. I promise this will be quick." He raised his hand, and Phoebe looked up into his cold pale eyes and saw her death in them.

Something green and sizzling sailed through the air and landed on his shoe. He glanced back, and Phoebe followed his glance and saw Angel dropping her coat as she rose in the air, her eyes narrowed and lips pressed together. "Let her go," Angel snapped, soaring above them.

Paying no attention to his disintegrating shoe, the man looked up, his mouth drawing out in a wide flat smirk. "You like this one, don't you?" Glancing at the blonde woman, he added, "Who exactly is Angel's little friend?"

The woman glanced at Phoebe as coldly as if she were about to pin her to a specimen board, and Phoebe swore to herself and God and whoever might be listening that if she got out of this she'd be gentle to every single insect she collected henceforth. "Phoebe Sandra Cay, twenty-two, graduate student at Harvard, hates typing and her advisor, enjoys taxonomy and being kissed." Phoebe's cheeks burned and she bit her lip as this blonde woman pulled the details of her life from thin air, from her mind. "Oh, and she's a mutant, Angel dear, did you know that?"

Phoebe blinked. These people had abilities, each one different. Was her microscopic sight the same sort of ability? Not that it would matter if Angel couldn't rescue her from the tall man, who turned back to Phoebe with that same terrifying flat smirk. "Really! What can she do?"

"See very tiny things," said the blonde woman. "Also, she hates causing pain. She cried the night she trimmed Angel's wings, so don't even think of offering her a job, she'd be useless."

The tall man sighed. "What a pity." And lifted his hand again.

"Please!" Phoebe screamed in desperation, just as Angel shrieked, "Don't!"

The man cocked his head. "My patience is not boundless, Angel," he said to the air above him.

"You don't have to kill her." Angel flew to hover above Phoebe, facing him down. "I heard once that we don't hurt our own kind except by necessity." The blonde woman gave a delicate snort, but the tall man looked at her, listening now. "From Shaw."

Those last two words made him flinch, shutting his eyes and gritting his bared teeth as the metal cage creaked around Phoebe, snarling, "Hardly an authority on ethics," as Angel gasped and staggered in midair, her earrings and buckles sagging downwards.

"So be better than him." Angel's voice was filled with strain, and Phoebe wanted to tell her not to overtax her wings, but her tongue felt stuck to the roof of her mouth. "If she's one of us that's all the more reason to let her go."

The tall man growled, "Never mention that name to me again," but he held his hand palm up to Angel.

"Never make me need to," she replied, but she took his hand, stepping daintily down from the air, beautiful even through Phoebe's fear. At his gesture her coat rose from its heap and floated over to her shoulders; another wave of his fingers and the metal fell away from Phoebe's wrists and ankles, the fence arched away and she could sit up.

Angel yanked on her coat, peeled off her gloves and caught Phoebe's wrists in her bare hands, and the touch of her silky-rough skin was a balm. "Come on, Phee, up you go," she coaxed, raising Phoebe to her trembling feet. "Can I --?"

An imperceptible headshake from the tall man, and Angel's face fell. She turned and hugged Phoebe tightly, and still shocky, all Phoebe could do was bury her face in Angel's soft-skinned neck and hug her back.

There was an explosive noise and a smell of sulfur, and Angel held Phoebe tighter through her startled jump, then let her go. "Bye, Phee," she said simply, brushed a light kiss over Phoebe's mouth and stepped back, placing her hand in the tall man's again. The blonde woman took his other hand, and standing beside her was a red devil in an impeccable suit, who winked at Phoebe just before they all vanished in a puff of dark curling smoke.

Phoebe's knees gave out, and she sat down heavily under the shocking weight of everything that had just happened. She wasn't the only person like her, and she was still alive, but now she was marooned in a warehouse in the middle of who knew where, and Angel was gone from her life for good.

The red devil man reappeared in another burst of smoke and held out his hand to Phoebe. "Come, little bird," he said in a thick Russian accent, "come go home."

* * * **** * * * 

The next day, with no better idea of what to do with herself, Phoebe went back to work to catch up on her typing. She sat at her desk, elbows propping her hands as she held her head between them, trying to summon the motivation to do anything, trying to think of anything besides beautiful Angel and her terrifying companions.

The door creaked open, and Phoebe looked up and saw Angel, gleaming under the light just as she had a week ago -- but no, her twin, this woman swung her arms and legs differently, she had a different grace, and a different smile. "Hi, Phoebe," she said, sweet just like Angel.

But she wasn't Angel, and Phoebe wanted to throw a pen at her face, wanted to cry. "Who are you?" she asked instead, gripping the edge of the desk.

The woman sighed and... rippled was the only word for it, growing taller as deep blue flowed down the honey-colored skin only to be replaced just as soon by a rosy pink complexion and long blonde hair. "You're good," she admitted. "I'll have to work on that. I'm just a messenger, all right? Angel did send me, with this."

She held out her hand, and Phoebe considered reaching out, thought of everything reaching out the first time had brought down on her. "Will this get me almost killed again?" she asked, her voice dull and brittle.

The messenger laughed appreciatively, shaking her head. "I hope not. Anyway, this is Angel's gift, and mine. Will you take it?"

Phoebe reached out, and the messenger opened her hand and dropped a slip of paper into Phoebe's. "There are more people like us there," she said, "but not quite so... anyway, they can use teachers, and they won't make you spend your time typing. Tell the Professor... tell him old friends sent you."

"I will," Phoebe said, just as the door closed, and unfolded the scrap of paper. It held an address: Professor Xavier's School, Salem Center, New York. Not all that far from Vassar, at that.

Phoebe took a deep breath, let it out, and stood up. Holding the paper carefully in her hand, she picked up her coat and walked out the door, leaving the office and the museum behind.


End file.
